It should be legal to make new music from old music and audio that wouldn't cut into the old music's sales, but the courts have not backed that up. Remember back when there was a nascent movement, mostly among hip hop, that used a ton of samples from different sources? Paul's Boutique and Fear Of A Black Planet were two of the biggest hits in that style, but then Biz Markie lost his shirt in a court case and that whole genre of music was pretty much killed overnight. Now sampling is much more rare and usually much more conspicuous with each particular sample -- e.g., when Puff Daddy used Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.
Side note: Bittersweet Symphony is a song where a band actually got permission to sample a song, but when it became a huge hit they were successfully sued and even lost songwriting credits.
Isn't freedom of speech a basic human right? We're at the point where a media company can claim your personal expression violates their IP without any proof, and your video or audio is removed from websites. Now it looks like they want to expand this abuse to cover all internet traffic, with the obvious side-effect of lots of legal and legitimate speech effectively being censored. It seems to me that allowing the government and media companies to filter or remove personal expressions from the internet under the pretense of possible IP violations is very much a matter of human rights.
If you think journalists today don't understand the precariousness of their employment, you are dead wrong. Every single journalist I know is under severe stress at the least, and most are under-employed or unemployed.
I laud these reporters for standing up for the news business and trying as best they can to keep the subject matter and material from becoming a race to the bottom. People complain about the papers these days - and in many cases rightfully so - but we're going to be in a woeful place if journalists become extinct and TV reporters, comedians, and bloggers are the only sources of news.
And in a terrific coincidence with one of today's other articles, the audio's been disabled because it hasn't been authorized by Warner Music Group. The word egregious comes to mind, and that's putting it nicely.
Could someone explain why I was modded to -1, Overrated, while this post, which says much the same thing and came after mine, is modded +3, Insightful?
I know my posts aren't exactly the wisdom of the ages, but I'd at least like a chance to get out of the karma pit I'm in.
The biggest difference is that we're not professionals - i.e., there's no set of academic, ethical, and skills requirements to work in IT. If the only requirement for working in a trade is that you convince someone to hire you for it, then the salaries are going to suffer right alongside the quality of the workforce.
My only experience with getting gas in Oregon was soon followed by my only experience having another driver on a highway hail me to roll down my window, and that soon was followed by my only experience pulling over in order to put my car's gas cap back on the tank.
If the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office has taught us anything, it's that taking something that already exists and adding internet-speak to it makes it a novel creation.
Damn, six years of waiting to comment and I forget to put quotes around the first two sentences. I should have gotten more sleep and hired a better trainer before posting.
I think that a lot of this has got to do with the general decline of the quality of pop music. People now expect to hear rubbishy 3 minute bubblegum crap on the radio that has the emotional impact of a wet lettuce.
Really? Do you really want to make an non-anonymous comment claiming that pop from the time of NES - mid-to-late 80s - wasn't as crappy as today and had a more positive emotional impact? I think #1s isn't the best measure - I'd rather see overall sales, as well as the singles charts - but because it's the first thing that turned up, let's look at some of the gems of '89:
Repeat Offender - Richard Marx
Hangin' Tough - New Kids on the Block
Girl You Know It's True - Milli Vanilli
Forever Your Girl - Paula Adbul
Dr. Feelgood - Motley Crue
Funny enough, those were consecutive #1 albums.
There were a lot of good pop albums made back then, but there are also a bunch of good ones made today. I've heard people dismiss the 80s as a shitty decade for music, others dismiss the 70s, others dismiss the current batch of music - whether it was in the 90s or now - and frankly their point has always been for shit. There's always good pop music being made, you just have to keep listening.
It's much easier to budget effects than creativity and while it may be "amazing" how poor T3 looks in the plotline department, it's hardly unsurprising. Perhaps it's melodramatic to write but creativity usually suffers at the hands of a large budget because the producers and the studio want to ensure their profits. This means they hire more writers which instead of producing an additive effect on creative quality, essentially removes the drive of the film - assuming there ever was one besides having a couple stars and a bland hook to land moviegoers - and either wears it down to the lowest common denominator plotline (see most any sequel) or into a schizophrenic mess (Rollerball, so I've heard). It's only when the plot is the drive behind the film that it has a reasonable chance of successfully making it through the hell of being a big budget studio film (LOTR, 2001).
A boycott wouldn't do much because almost no one would bother with it. Instead, try having a day or a week of protests - picketing outside theaters, chain record stores (Best Buy, Tower, Virgin, HMV, et al). That would be great because it's actually somewhat realistic and unlike simply not buying things, it sends a clear a direct message to the companies that people are pissed off at them, while it also educates consumers who don't know any better.
A salary and white hairs by the age of 24. Still, I guess the bobbin head beats that just because they paid $10 per employee to have the CEO figuratively jizz on their faces. I may not enjoy my job that much but at least my employers don't actively try to remove my dignity.
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You can be ticketed for going too slow for the flow of traffic, even if you're driving within the speed limit and everyone else is not.
It should be legal to make new music from old music and audio that wouldn't cut into the old music's sales, but the courts have not backed that up. Remember back when there was a nascent movement, mostly among hip hop, that used a ton of samples from different sources? Paul's Boutique and Fear Of A Black Planet were two of the biggest hits in that style, but then Biz Markie lost his shirt in a court case and that whole genre of music was pretty much killed overnight. Now sampling is much more rare and usually much more conspicuous with each particular sample -- e.g., when Puff Daddy used Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.
Side note: Bittersweet Symphony is a song where a band actually got permission to sample a song, but when it became a huge hit they were successfully sued and even lost songwriting credits.
Isn't freedom of speech a basic human right? We're at the point where a media company can claim your personal expression violates their IP without any proof, and your video or audio is removed from websites. Now it looks like they want to expand this abuse to cover all internet traffic, with the obvious side-effect of lots of legal and legitimate speech effectively being censored. It seems to me that allowing the government and media companies to filter or remove personal expressions from the internet under the pretense of possible IP violations is very much a matter of human rights.
If you think journalists today don't understand the precariousness of their employment, you are dead wrong. Every single journalist I know is under severe stress at the least, and most are under-employed or unemployed.
I laud these reporters for standing up for the news business and trying as best they can to keep the subject matter and material from becoming a race to the bottom. People complain about the papers these days - and in many cases rightfully so - but we're going to be in a woeful place if journalists become extinct and TV reporters, comedians, and bloggers are the only sources of news.
And in a terrific coincidence with one of today's other articles, the audio's been disabled because it hasn't been authorized by Warner Music Group. The word egregious comes to mind, and that's putting it nicely.
I'd think the octopus would have a natural advantage in a snowball fight.
Could someone explain why I was modded to -1, Overrated, while this post, which says much the same thing and came after mine, is modded +3, Insightful? I know my posts aren't exactly the wisdom of the ages, but I'd at least like a chance to get out of the karma pit I'm in.
The biggest difference is that we're not professionals - i.e., there's no set of academic, ethical, and skills requirements to work in IT. If the only requirement for working in a trade is that you convince someone to hire you for it, then the salaries are going to suffer right alongside the quality of the workforce.
My only experience with getting gas in Oregon was soon followed by my only experience having another driver on a highway hail me to roll down my window, and that soon was followed by my only experience pulling over in order to put my car's gas cap back on the tank.
If the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office has taught us anything, it's that taking something that already exists and adding internet-speak to it makes it a novel creation.
Damn, six years of waiting to comment and I forget to put quotes around the first two sentences. I should have gotten more sleep and hired a better trainer before posting.
Really? Do you really want to make an non-anonymous comment claiming that pop from the time of NES - mid-to-late 80s - wasn't as crappy as today and had a more positive emotional impact? I think #1s isn't the best measure - I'd rather see overall sales, as well as the singles charts - but because it's the first thing that turned up, let's look at some of the gems of '89:
Funny enough, those were consecutive #1 albums.
There were a lot of good pop albums made back then, but there are also a bunch of good ones made today. I've heard people dismiss the 80s as a shitty decade for music, others dismiss the 70s, others dismiss the current batch of music - whether it was in the 90s or now - and frankly their point has always been for shit. There's always good pop music being made, you just have to keep listening.
It's much easier to budget effects than creativity and while it may be "amazing" how poor T3 looks in the plotline department, it's hardly unsurprising. Perhaps it's melodramatic to write but creativity usually suffers at the hands of a large budget because the producers and the studio want to ensure their profits. This means they hire more writers which instead of producing an additive effect on creative quality, essentially removes the drive of the film - assuming there ever was one besides having a couple stars and a bland hook to land moviegoers - and either wears it down to the lowest common denominator plotline (see most any sequel) or into a schizophrenic mess (Rollerball, so I've heard). It's only when the plot is the drive behind the film that it has a reasonable chance of successfully making it through the hell of being a big budget studio film (LOTR, 2001).
A boycott wouldn't do much because almost no one would bother with it. Instead, try having a day or a week of protests - picketing outside theaters, chain record stores (Best Buy, Tower, Virgin, HMV, et al). That would be great because it's actually somewhat realistic and unlike simply not buying things, it sends a clear a direct message to the companies that people are pissed off at them, while it also educates consumers who don't know any better.
Of course you could always try buying indie music as well, though some have major label distributors, you can always find others.
A salary and white hairs by the age of 24. Still, I guess the bobbin head beats that just because they paid $10 per employee to have the CEO figuratively jizz on their faces. I may not enjoy my job that much but at least my employers don't actively try to remove my dignity.
Thanks everyone, you've been great.